The Illinois men's basketball team continues to build toward hosting Western Illinois for their regular season opener Saturday. Tonight at 7 p.m., the Illini will play the Spotlight Jammers in their final exhibition game as they continue to prepare for the Leathernecks.

"It's a buildup, just like going from the Orange and Blue (Scrimmage) to the Illinois All-Stars and now to the Spotlight Jammers," said junior center Nick Smith. "It's just another step. We're not expecting to be great, but we're expecting to improve quite a bit."

Once the regular season starts, the Illini have little time to practice and develop and Illinois head coach Bruce Weber wants to see his team take advantage of their opportunity to get some work in on the Assembly Hall floor.

"It's a dress rehearsal and you want to make improvement every time you go out whether it's practice or games," Weber said. "It's going to be on us quick. We're going to have four games in a 10-day period that really count and then you come back with four more in eight days. You're not going to have much practice time so you've got to make the most of every day that you have."

Three Illini players expected to see a lot of playing time when games count could be sitting the entire exhibition on the padded seats next to Weber. Weber will decide today if junior guard Luther Head and redshirt freshman forward Aaron Spears will play tonight. Head and Spears broke team rules and did not play in earlier exhibition games as well.

Freshman guard Richard McBride could only watch during most of last week's practices and could continue watching in today's exhibition. McBride suffered an injury to his right foot that makes him doubtful to play today. Tuesday was the last practice that McBride went full speed.

"The last test (on Saturday) was another clear," Weber said. "We think it's a sore foot, a sprained foot, a bone bruise, something like that. Now it's a matter of we'll try him (Sunday) a little bit and our thing is we want to make sure he's ready next Saturday."

Starting Thursday, McBride had a test on his foot done each day for three consecutive days. The tests started with a bone scan followed by an X-ray and concluded with a MRI.

"I'm happy it wasn't a stress fracture and that we're pretty much cleared," Weber said.

As the Illini lose players, the accolades continue to come for sophomore guard Dee Brown. Last week, ESPN.com recognized Brown as a second-team preseason All-American.

Brown is the only Big Ten player on the two five-man teams, though three Illinois opponents made the list. North Carolina's Raymond Felton and Missouri's Arthur Johnson made the first team, while Missouri's Rickey Paulding joins Brown on the second team.

Brown recognized the insignificance of receiving a preseason award.

"That's crazy; they just doing that just because," Brown said. "I just want to win and that's the most important thing. I just keep hearing things about me just individual-wise. I'd rather for our team to have more success than myself."